The Masquerade: A Poetic Drama in Four Acts

By Mickhail Yurievich Lermontov

The Masquerade, a treasured four-act play by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov, is a classic work of Russian romanticism.

In 1830s St. Petersburg, aristocrat Arbenin and Nina, his wife, attend a masked ball. In a tragic case of mistaken identity, Arbenin convinces himself that his wife is romantically involved with Prince Zvezdich. Arbenin is tragically blinded by jealousy and pride, and then a disaster happens...

A celebration and examination of a classic work from the Golden Age of Russian culture, the first poetic translation by Russian American professor Alfred E. Karpovich brings The Masquerade to a new, English-speaking audience. A work of great importance, this drama examines the collision between true love and the societal prejudice of honor and dignity. In translation, it casts an inquisitive eye at the state of human dignity in the twenty-first century.

Praise for The Masquerade translation

The following is in reference to Dr. Alfred E. Karpovichs translation of the great Russian writer and poet Mikhail Lermontovs play :Masquerade.

Thoroughly versed in classical Russian, I am a great admirer of Lermontovs works. I approached the translation with a feeling of skepticism, but was literally knocked over by the translation.

Mr. Karpovichs understanding of Lermontov and fine-tuning of the English version are truly amazing.

It is my pleasure to give this work the highest possible recommendation (and I hope to see it on stage).

Sincerely yours,

Nicholas Bobrinskoy GDOOSJ

(formerly of Marymount Manhattan College Faculty, NYS; St Peters College, author of The Golden Age of Russian Literature; Pronounce Russian Correctly and of many articles & Interviews in USA & Russia)

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475976182

Mickhail Yurievich Lermontov

Translator Alfred E. Karpovich earned his advanced degrees in Moscow and taught and performed linguistic research in Leningrad and New York. He worked as a translator for the Soviet Foreign Relations Department and his translation work has been widely published. He retired in 2000. Playwright Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov (1814–1841) was one of Russia’s greatest poets and writers. He was homeschooled, later attended boarding school with the sons of nobility, and continued his education at Moscow University, where he started to write poetry under the influence of Lord Byron.

Book preview

Copyright © 2013 by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov

Translated by Alfred Karpovich.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogues in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7617-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7624-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7618-2 (ebk)

Library Congress Control Number: 2013903359

iUniverse rev. date: 05/24/2013

Contents

Introduction: Lermontov, His Time, Life And Legacy

A Note From The Translator

Cast Of Characters

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act 4

Scene 1

Appendices

A. Scenario

B. Synopsis

C. Acknowledgments

Endnotes

In memory of

Irakliy Andronnikov, the unique Lermontov scholar,

from the Translator

The target audiences:

1)   The avid General English-speaking reader who cares to expand his/her cultural horizons;

2)   The college students and scholars who major in Drama;

3)   The university students and scholars who major in the Russian literature and language;

4)   Theater repertory companies in their drive to rejuvenate the repertoire of foreign classics;

5)   Theater spectators who enjoy Russian classical plays which are not infrequent on American stage;

6)   Russian (local or foreign) repertory companies staging M. Lermontov in Russian, now having a possibility to use the English translation in subtitles or supertitles;

7)   Russian American theaters performing in English.

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M. Lermontov—Artist: K. Gorbunov, 1841

Watercolors

Introduction:

Lermontov, his Time, Life and Legacy

Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov, a poet, a writer, and a playwright, is not well known in the English-speaking world. Born in Moscow (1814), he was brought up by E. Arsenieva, his wealthy aristocratic grandmother. His parents died after a short-lived unsuccessful marriage. This tragedy impacted the growing boy. The feelings of loneliness and sadness never left him. His grandmother gave him an extensive education at home. They lived in a village she owned. She also owned the people who lived in it. Serfdom (slavery of peasants) reigned in Russia. It was legal to physically punish the serfs or to sell them. Mikhail witnessed brutality and later became a champion of freedom and a hater of the Czarist regime.

E. Arsenieva hired a Frenchman to teach her grandson French, a must in the culture of nobility. This French teacher was once a soldier in the Napoleonic War of 1812. His stories inspired the young man to write the poem Borodino about the defeat of Napoleon’s troops by the Russians. This is how Lermontov’s patriotic ideas originated.

At the age of 14, Lermontov attended boarding school for the sons of nobility. Later, he continued education at Moscow University where he studied languages, ethics, politics and literature. Then, he moved to St. Petersburg to perfect his new knowledge at a more prestigious university. This school rejected Lermontov’s credits from Moscow. His friends had persuaded him to enter the Cadet School from which he graduated with the officer’s rank of cornet. All this time he wrote his poetry and prose. His rebellious spirit in poetry irritated the Czar (Nicholas I) and his administration. They controlled Lermontov as an officer and as a poet. He was commissioned to the Caucasus (South of Russia) where the troops were routinely stationed. Lermontov participated in several military operations but he was never awarded any mark of distinction. His personal life was not successful. At 26, Mikhail was not married. His several love affairs with married and unmarried women were failures, which only added to his usual melancholy. Mikhail was no pleasure to socialize with. He always laughed at his fellow officers who spoke exclusively French and had problems with the Russian language. In 1841 Lermontov was killed by officer Martynov in a duel. The poet was twenty-six years old. Duels were illegal in Russia at that time, so Lermontov’s dead body was left in the torrential rain in the south of Russia, at the foot of the Mount of Mashuk. His miserable grandmother came to bury him.

Lermontov’s prolific literary work is unparalleled in the Russian literature. Irakliy Andronnikov, a Lermontov scholar of the Georgian ethnic descent, spent about sixty years of his life to study Lermontov’s legacy. Lermontov was never monotonous in his writing styles. He was an early Romanticist in his small lyric poems, often an imitation of Byron’s works (apart from French and Russian, the poet knew English and German). His major long poems The Demon and Mtsyri are purely romantic ones painted in dark grim colors. The Demon wishes to be good but with one kiss he takes away the life of a Georgian nun he loves. He spreads the evil inadvertently because the evil is in his cold blood, and then he suffers in his eternal solitude. So does Arbenin, Lermontov’s protagonist in The Masquerade. He is a villain who suffers together with his victims because the demon is in him. A thick layer of melancholy is deep in the poet’s personality. A beautiful match for it is the scenic panorama of the Caucasian Mountains, turbulent rivers, rapids, and snow summits. Lermontov’s nationalism never malignifies into chauvinism, despite his military background. On the contrary, he glorifies Georgia, Chechnya, Dagestan and their proud, freedom-loving non-Slavic peoples, including Jews.

His idol was A. Pushkin, and Lermontov is placed second to Pushkin. The Masquerade was revised by Lermontov three times to please his censors and content editors. When Pushkin was killed in a duel (1837), Lermontov wrote a poem The Poet’s Death in which he accused the political system of Pushkin’s death. His attacks on the regime did not remain unnoticed. The Czar and the elite tried to ostracize the poet.

By 1832 Lermontov had already written 200 lyric poems, 10 long poems, and three plays. Only The Masquerade was a poetic drama. The other plays were written in prose. The Masquerade appeared in 1835. In the poet’s life time, it was not staged. It was first staged in 1852. The poet was advised to change the content and the intrigue in order to ease up the tension. The Masquerade expresses the Zeitgeist of the Russian Romantic period in its transition to critical realism. One hundred years later (1941) the film version of The Masquerade appeared in Russia. It was a huge success. In today’s Russia The Masquerade is staged rarely. Arbenin’s monologs are passionate and pathetic. As to the dialogues, they are easy to read and true to life.

This Russian writer will be best remembered for his novel A Hero of Our Time (1840). The hero is Pechorin who, like the Demon or Arbenin, spreads the evil carelessly, out of boredom, compromising his innate decency. Lermontov sides with the victims: strong men and fragile women of the